AMITY AND AGGRESSION - A SYMBOLIC THEORY OF INCEST

In recent years, research on incest has come to focus increasingly around Edward Westermarck's landmark hypothesis that close childhood association is critical to the generation of incest aversion, avoidance and taboos. There remain, though, several deficiencies in this approach. Developing a view implicit in Westermarck's own formulation, this article seeks to overcome these problems by arguing that incest aversion develops between those who experience familial amity towards one another. Familial amity is critical, it is argued, because sex is experienced as a form of aggression, a conflation that may be culturally constructed out of, and biologically underpinned by, neurophysiological processes. Incest avoidance and incest taboos are symbolic encodements that both shape and are shaped by this affective dissonance.